26 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



January 



timber in the East is gone, save in the 

 less accessible mountain regions, where 

 patches still remain. The new growth 

 is very far from supplying the annual 

 demand upon it, and for the most part 

 is cut off before it is well started, ren- 

 dering cheap returns instead of profit- 

 able returns. Yet there are millions of 

 acres of non-agricultural land in our 

 eastern country, fit only for forest 

 growth, that might yield enormous 

 profits, but do not. They are awaiting 

 an intelligent forest management. 

 Much of our main timber supplies, and 

 all of our best material, is shipped in 

 at great expense from the west. Our 

 wood-manufacturing plants are still 

 found east of the Mississippi River, 

 though they are tending to move to 

 the source of supply. These are axioms 

 to members of this convention ; but it 

 is important that the whole people 

 should know them, and that they 

 should be kept closely in mind by 

 members of Congress. 



What can be done to remedy the 

 situation ? The answer is plain : To 

 give up the time-worn, destructive 

 practices of our ancient ancestors, and 

 replace them by an intelligent forest 

 management. And how can this be 

 attained? The answer is equally defi- 

 nite, though less axiomatic, namely, by 

 government control on non-agricultu- 

 ral land. 



The older countries particularly 

 France, Germany, and Austria have 

 arrived at this solution, and by such 

 drastic experience, that their laws gov- 

 erning the cutting of timber interfere 

 with the freedom of the individual 

 landholder. Let us be wise enough, if 

 possible, to profit by their experience 

 without undergoing their suffering. 



Because of the time element in- 

 volved in the growth of trees, private 

 ownership of forest lands in all coun- 

 tries, including our own, has proven 

 both wasteful and unproductive. Most 

 of our forests in the eastern portion of 

 the United States are in the hands of 

 private owners ; for the most part they 

 are either cut for immediate revenue, 

 without reference to the future, or 



else, having been cut, they are neglect- 

 ed entirely. Two splendid exceptions 

 to this statement occur in the state for- 

 ests of New York and Pennsylvania, 

 New York having purchased more 

 than one million acres in the Adiron- 

 dack Mountains at the headwaters of 

 the Hudson River, and Pennsylvania 

 nearly a million acres in the water- 

 sheds of the Susquehanna and the Del- 

 aware. Massachusetts has made small 

 beginnings, and public sentiment is 

 awakening in New Jersey. These are 

 the wealthier states. Some of the less 

 wealthy states may follow, but in less 

 efficient ways and upon diverging lines 

 of policy; but public welfare demands 

 that more prompt and efficient action 

 be taken. The forests of New Hamp- 

 shire and Vermont, of West Virginia, 

 eastern Tennessee, North and South 

 Carolina, are of inestimable value to 

 the country. It is folly to permit 

 the forest-covered mountains in these 

 states to be denuded, with the irrepara- 

 ble losses by fire and erosion to the soil 

 that always follow irresponsible cut- 

 ting, making the land in many places 

 barren for all future time. The report 

 of the Forest Service in northern New 

 Hampshire tells us that 84,000 acres in 

 the White Mountain region have been 

 made completely barren in the last fif- 

 teen years, and the report for the 

 Southern Appalachian Mountains that 

 probably no region in America is more 

 subject to erosion and flood when the 

 forest cover is removed. 



It is not possible that states relative- 

 ly small in population and in wealth, 

 having no large cities, shall from their 

 scanty .means take any well-defined co- 

 operative action. If the facts are once 

 put clearly before the country, the 

 common sense of the people will com- 

 pel action by Congress. 



Few people have stopped to think of 

 the importance of the forest to the for- 

 est industries, lumbering and wood- 

 working factories in the eastern states, 

 or of the importance of steady water- 

 flow, both to navigation and to manu-' 

 facturing along the water courses. 

 The president of the Amoskeag Com- 



